Government

May issue guardians

Florida recently passed a law which expands the “Guardian Program” to include teachers. The program is designed to arm select school employees to receive special training. Any school district that establishes a guardian program gets additional funding and grant money in order to implement the program.

Now that the students are finished with their school year, teachers are in the midst of what is known as “post planning days” and learning about planned changes for the next school year. Thanks to the fact that the school district gets to pick who is a guardian, the system is going the way that ALL “may issue” programs go. What teachers are hearing about the Guardian Program is:

Although they can legally take part in the Guardian Program, teachers will still not be permitted to take part. Instead, administrators will be the only ones permitted to take part. Principals, superintendents, and some county level office staff will be the only ones permitted to take part. Anyone who is taking part will get a free gun, ammo, training, and a stipend for having the extra certification.

The school districts have turned this “may issue” system into a cash cow for earning grant money and redistributing some of that grant money to select, politically connected individuals. The guardian program has been corrupted to the point where it is completely useless.

By Divemedic, ago

Guardian

Today the Florida Senate voted to remove the prohibition on teachers carrying firearms as a part of the Guardian program. This ends the law that armed school janitors and lunch ladies, but denied the same ability to teachers. Opponents claim that this places too much of a burden on teachers. I don’t see how, since the program is entirely voluntary, and should a teacher ever need to use their weapon to defend their students, it will be less of a burden than standing by as they watch someone murder their students or even getting murdered themselves.

As for me, I have already volunteered for the program. I hope that I am selected. I even used it as an excuse to buy a new handgun. I just bought a M&P 2.0 9mm Compact. I caught one on sale at my local gun store. They had them on sale for $379, and at that price they threw in 4 magazines and a $50 gift card.

I put a new set of Trijicon HD sights on it, and installed an Apex Action Enhancement kit. The new action lowered my trigger pull to what I measured to be 4.75 pounds and removed the grit from the trigger. The trigger now has a smooth pre-travel, and a clean, crisp break.

Now to wait for the House and my school district.

By Divemedic, ago

Combat pay

Taking a break from my trip report to talk about a news story that appeared in the Orlando Sentinel back in May:

Carver Middle School is an F rated school in the middle of the Pine Hills neighborhood, located west of Orlando, in Orange County. This school’s students tested in the lowest 3 percent of all students nationwide. In order to correct this, Orange county is attempting to lure the best teachers in the state to the school by offering an extra $20,000 a year to teachers willing to work there.

The problem is that the school is in a crime ridden, poverty stricken neighborhood. I have blogged about Pine Hills and its surrounding neighborhoods before. More than once. The school is 91% black, 6% Hispanic of any race, and less than 1% white. Seventy percent of the students receive free or reduced lunch.

Both the violent and non-violent crime rates in Pine Hills are double the national average. Police officers are shot and killed in the area of this school often enough that several streets in the area are named for fallen officers, and shootings happen there nearly every night. The local government repeatedly dumps millions of dollars into this blighted area in an attempt to “clean up” the crime problem, to no avail.

Currently, the teachers there are inexperienced first or second year teachers who transfer away at first opportunity. Teacher pay is tied to student performance, and combined with the crime in the neighborhood, teachers avoid the area like the plague.

Any teacher who accepts a job at this school is placing his or her life in jeopardy. A $20,000 bonus is not worth it, in my opinion. The plan likely will not work and be a waste of money, anyway. You cannot, no matter how good of a teacher you are, teach a student who does not want to learn. The crime problems need to be addressed, the gangs eliminated, the drugs under control, before you can convince the students to give up the thug lifestyle and learn.

By Divemedic, ago

Cops are a money maker

In the year 2000, my car was burglarized. The police knew who did it. They got his identity from the fingerprints. They told me that he would not likely face charges, because the police department did not have the resources to deal with “minor” crimes like auto burglary.

In the year 2005, someone stole a check from my mailbox, forged my signature on it, and deposited it into their checking account. I got a copy of the check, and sure enough, there was the name and signature of the miscreant. The police again told me that they didn’t have the resources to pursue the criminal.

On the way home, I passed 5 cops writing traffic tickets. I lost a total of about $900 from those two crimes. I have lost more than that from the five traffic tickets I have received in my life.

The police write over 40 million traffic tickets a year in the US. The average officer writes $300,000 a year in traffic tickets. It is a $6 billion a year industry. The city of Atlanta has even admitted that police raises and pensions depend on how much revenue is brought in by traffic citations. So even though there may be no quota per se, you can bet that the police have a real motivation to write questionable tickets. The Atlanta police union admits to using traffic tickets to fund a raise for Atlanta cops.

Warning people of speed traps ahead has been ruled as protected speech, and has also been ruled as interfering with police business by the Seventh circuit. In that same decision, it also ruled that using traffic fines to generate revenue is legitimate police business, and interfering with that is a crime.

Florida, the state where I reside, makes $100 million a year from traffic tickets, and that doesn’t include the amount collected by state and county government from their share of those 4 million traffic citations. Hillsboro county got another $36 million. St Petersburg, a city within that county, got another $500 thousand. Hillsboro is only one of 67 Florida counties.  There are only 15 million adults in Florida, meaning that one in four Florida drivers get a ticket each year.

The police are revenue generators, and are being used to squash political groups. They no longer are here to protect and serve the public. 

By Divemedic, ago